The one when a lot of people in my family played touch football in the leaves and I watched them out a window and felt like I was in a Japanese movie, except, really, what I was feeling wasn't angst so much as just being shy, which is more than a little odd, when you considering that we're talking about kin, here. Also, let's face it, Miyazaki's never going to option my life.

The day after being in the back seat of a car that rolled one-and-a-half times in somebody's front yard on River Road because of some seriously misguided steering decisions on the part of my best friend.

The one when my mother put cheese in the mashed potatoes and had to barricade off a section of the guest room and fight her way out.

The one when I cooked a turkey (well, dried it swiftly in an oven) and took it into a newsroom and we all stopped reporting and paginating and editing long enough to be kind of a family except without the loving or the hating parts.

The one when I discovered that enough frost-surviving parsley and butter can make steamed carrots actually taste good, and that people will be quite gracious about that, and that therefore pungent fresh herbs, cheap easy butter, sweet good carrots in a bag, and decent people to share a meal with are a plenty and all deserve our thanks and gratitude.

It's a country ham. I'm from Virginia, and nobody I know eats Virginia ham. We eat country ham. Redeye-type ham. There's so much salt in these things that they sink in the Dead Sea. There's so much salt in these things that you have to wear double-gloves, preferably leather on the outside, latex on the inside, or your hands chap. There's so much salt in these things that you have to sign a release form at the Post Office.

I love country ham. We simmer them for 20 minutes a pound and then peel off the fat and scrape off the mold. Farmer, spare that turkey!

It's billed as America's hometown parade, and heaven knows it was small-town, and I mean that as a compliment. There was a singing state policeman who actually was rather better than more than a little of his material (including the aged chestnut of our national anthem, which has not aged well, unlike the nation it celebrates). There were characters who were not familiar to us, but whom Joe found every bit as appealing as the Bears from Disney's Country Bear Jamboree. (He would, he mentioned, have preferred Pooh.)

Overheard on a cell phone. "I'll be back there in five minutes. Park it? Anywhere you want, it's a parade float."

Alex and I met his close friend and my old friend Bill, his wife (unnamed here to foil malicious Googling), and their kids. We sat on a hillside, watched the parade and enjoyed the kids trying to ruin their dental work by running headlong down the hill toward a stone wall and concrete sidewalk. Some good pictures in the brilliant New England sunlight.

I don't mind having aged so much. Once I looked like Michael J. Fox; now it's more of a Richard Crenna vibe. Promise me Joe will never age, though?

Joe and I headed out into a perfectly damp snow, the kind where rolling it hauls the snow up off the grass in thick peels of snowman stuff. We made a bunch of animals and snow angels too. (You may need to be told: It's a porcupine.)

And here Joe works on his first fully intentional snow angel. (Previous such have included helpful limb guidance.)

"I was dreaming about one of my stories, with the beaver, the frogs, the eagles and the hat. You might watch it some time, because it has a part where the sea dragons and the villains are attacking the beaver because it wants to get in their water. "

If my Google referrals are any measure, Karen Montague-Reyes' new strip is getting a lot of interest. I get lots of people who find my site based on the search phrase "Clear Blue Water" or its author's name. (Typos are a never-ending source of interest for me. I got a visitor last night from someone who was looking for "pictures of women whit no tops on," and it was the misspelling of "with" that delivered them to me. Talk about disappointment.)

Montague-Reyes clearly follows the For Better or For Worse model, in which tribulations and maturations occur at about the daily speed they would in real life. This is a risky strategy, because it takes so long to develop at sympathetic readship -- but success means a long-term and loyal audience. Comic strips are hard put to succeed right now. I hope Montague-Reyes is successful, because her humor is bright and her drama affecting. You can't judge how many people read a strip along with you, but I hope the number here is great and that she's first-read on breakfast tables everywhere in America.

Scott McCloudProbably the best-known thinker about comic strips/books/graphic novels/sequential art working right now. Controversial among comic fans but unequivocally an influential and original thinker.